The Southwest Florida Reading Festival is the largest one-day reading festival in the state!

This free annual Festival incites a passion for reading. Renew your interest in reading as the Festival authors are announced. Hear an author speak at the Festival and get inspired to borrow or buy the book, maybe even to write one of your own!

The Reading Festival’s mission is to:

Celebrate the importance of reading.

Bring the finest literary talent to the community of Southwest Florida.

Encourage in adults, teens and children an interest in, and love of, literature by providing quality events featuring popular authors in multiple venues.

Promote lifelong learning and school reading readiness by raising awareness of the library’s services and its role in the community’s quality of life.

Build continuing regional partnerships among libraries and between libraries and other community organizations by cooperatively presenting a large, quality literary event.

Promote public libraries as centers for recreational reading,
information, technology, and the arts.

Lee County Library System produces the Reading Festival to inform the community about the resources and services available at their local libraries and remind them these resources and services are free with a library card.

Lee County libraries play an important and contemporary role in our community as dynamic centers for learning and knowledge for all ages. Today’s library program is just as likely to be hands-on computer instruction as it is to be a book discussion. Today’s reference questions are just as likely to be answered via telephone, email or online chat as by a librarian at the reference desk. The Lee County Library System adds resources every day.

The Library continuously researches and anticipates the informational needs of the community. The Reading Festival is an opportunity to take programs and resources outside the library’s walls to inform existing users about available services and to entice new users to think of their local library whenever they need information of any kind.

The Lee County Library System thanks the hundreds of volunteers, local media, Festival donors and sponsors whose support is critical in maintaining the level of excellence for which the Reading Festival is known.

It was my pleasure to be part of the Southwest Florida Reading Festival. The audience was large and enthusiastic for both talks and both book signings, and I really enjoyed the whole Festival.